City of Darkness, City of Light
by Malvolia
Summary: Selina Kyle shakes off the dust of Gotham and her past life and follows a trail to Florence.


Selina stared at the mushroom cloud until all that was left was the afterimage. Tears flowed from the effort of not blinking. She had been so sure, so _sure_ it couldn't end like that, that there would have turned out to be an escape plan after all, that for once the ridiculously noble archetypal man wouldn't have to sacrifice his life for the fools who didn't even realize they needed him to. She stared ten minutes longer before remembering a place on the water's edge where the detritus of Gotham washed ashore.

The Batpod didn't move as fast as its aerial cousin, but Selina still rode like the proverbial winged creature out of hell as she raced along the riverbank. She leapt from the bike earlier than was strictly safe and landed harder than was advisable, feeling a slight twinge in her ankle that she welcomed as a distraction from other sorts of pain.

There was no sign of the Bat or its pilot. She swore quietly and looked out over the water, tears stinging her eyes. What had she expected? It was a _nuclear explosion_. They'd probably be dealing with the fallout for years, longer even than it would take to rebuild the bridges, the highways, the infrastructure.

Maybe a quicker end was the best. Maybe it would've been better for all of them.

A resigned voice broke into her musings. "Looks like nothing here to see."

She whirled, and if the young detective's eyes hadn't mirrored the frustrated loss in her own, she would've kicked him into the river. As it was, she had to chamber the kick abruptly before it made contact. He never flinched.

"I kinda feel like kicking something, too."

"You knew him," she said.

He nodded silently, and she felt a surge of connection. She didn't want to talk about it yet, either.

"Need a lift back into town?" she asked.

"On that thing?"

"It's no more conspicuous than walking," she pointed out, with a slight gesture towards her costume.

"After everything that's happened today, I don't think anybody's in the mood to worry about dress code."

She was about to protest when she realized that setting the Batpod up in the overrun alley by her apartment building wasn't a feasible option, and that this was as good a place as any to stash it until she packed her things to leave town.

"All right, then, officer. Let's test your theory."

They walked slowly down the shattered streets together—over pieces of buildings and vehicles, around the populace huddled in clumps of pain and relief.

"Tomorrow this'll be an insurance adjuster's nightmare," her companion said, waving a hand in a broad sweep.

Her eyes followed the sweep unthinkingly, and she caught sight of a white mark on a nearby wall. "Is that…."

"Yeah," he said. "I made those."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "So they'd know he'd come back. So he'd know we wanted him to. Maybe just for me."

The marks didn't look like they'd survive a good hard rain, and she bit back a snide comment as to the permanence of the hero's return.

"Detective!" shouted a female officer from the street corner nearest them.

"Duty calls," he said. "Listen, if you need anything…." He cast a glance back towards the bridge. "Well. I'm not going anywhere."

"I am."

He nodded, as if to a colleague, and then he walked back into the mess. Much later, she would realize that she didn't even know his name. In the moment, it wasn't important.

She saw more of the white bats as she made her way back to her apartment to salvage whatever she could before taking off. Funny she had never noticed them in all the months of the siege, and now they seemed to be everywhere. There was even one outside the door to her apartment building. Although—it was bigger than the others, more detailed. She shook her head as she picked her way over the rubble in the stairwell and unlocked her door. No point in getting drawn into fantasies of….

Her train of thought jarred to a halt as she stepped into her apartment. Hanging on a nail in the wall was the most perfect string of pearls she had ever seen. She took them down carefully, as if afraid they'd disappear before she could touch them, but they were solid and real and definitely the same pearls she'd stolen from Bruce Wayne's safe.

She searched the rest of the main room, packing as she did so, and found just one more thing that hadn't been there when she left—an old vinyl record of Bobby Darin singing "That's the Way Love Is." Which was all very sentimental, but otherwise worthless, and she liked to think she knew Bruce better than that. She picked up the record, flipped it over, and smiled.

"All right then, Mr. Wayne," she said aloud, shouldering her bag. "'Beyond the Sea' it is."

* * *

As a cultural center with a seamy side, Paris was Europe's answer to Gotham City, which made it the intuitive place to start. She rented a room in the cheapest hostel she could find and roamed the streets night and day, searching.

Her only break-in during the weeks she spent there was to find a computer to run the Clean Slate program. As the progress bar stretched slowly across the screen, she felt relief running through her bones like warm liquid. She nicked a piece of chalk she saw on the way out of the room, but then she threw a euro over her shoulder at the last second, as compensation. Couldn't hurt.

Soon, the news media were reporting on the number of major monuments tagged with the symbol of a bat. The hostel where she stayed had one right by its front door, which reappeared no matter how often the owner wiped it off. But he was a naïve sort and Selina didn't expect he would turn his thoughts to his customers on that account. She suspected he might start noticing her more when she ran out of money.

When she went looking for a currency exchange to trade her last few dollars for euros, she passed a bank that bore a bat sketch she didn't remember making. It resembled the one left outside her apartment in Gotham. She had avoided banks out of habit—before running Clean Slate, she had avoided the wealthiest places in a city unless she was there on a job—but now she entered and gave her name boldly. The teller easily found a bank account set up for her. She hid a smile at Bruce's confidence. There wasn't much in the account, which she took as a sign not to linger. She cleaned it out and left the city.

Now her search had a starting point. She would begin at the city center and walk the blocks around in a widening spiral, taking special note of banks. The bat symbol appeared on a bank in London, too, and in Berlin, but both had even less money than the bank in Paris had.

In Warsaw, the teller said there was a message for her, along with the cash. She unfolded the paper he handed her and read: COLD. This time, she didn't bother hiding a smile. After a few months, it appeared her financial backer was growing a little impatient.

In Vienna, the word was WARMER.

In Venice, two words: VERY WARM.

Florence: HOT.

She brought out her own chalk again in Florence, marking a front stair of the hostel where she was staying, but couldn't bring herself to mark any of the centuries-old buildings around her. Instead, she would stoop to pretend to tie a shoe and make a few quick swipes at the sidewalk.

One day, as she was adding the ears, a pair of shoes came to a halt in front of her. She left the chalk on the sidewalk and stood up slowly.

"Ms. Kyle."

"Mr. Wayne."

"You found me."

She brushed her hands together, and most of chalk dust on them fell to the pavement below. "Yeah, well, you found me first." She lost the rest of the dust in his hair.

When she had kissed him last, it had been under the shadow of impending death in the darkness of Gotham. Now, every moment of contact burst with light and promise.

"I think Florence is going to be good to us," she said, and he smiled, the freest and truest smile she'd ever seen from him. As he reached out to finger the pearls around her neck, she felt her own face reflecting his expression.

"I think it's off to a good start," he said, and offered her his arm.

Side by side, they walked on through Florence, a city that by its very age seemed to be offering them all the permanence and all the time in the world.

They accepted it.


End file.
